About The Designer

Steven Birnbaum

The whimsical-meets-classical aesthetic that has punctuated designer Steven Birnbaum’s 40-year-long career likely stems from its origins. After graduating from State University New York - New Paltz, the creative got his start in theater, where he created costumes for award-winning Broadway and off-Broadway productions. He translated his penchant for dynamic, dramatic design into his next venture—evening wear—and later into his first collection of wedding dresses, titled “Working Weddings.” Though they were ideated with the career-driven New York woman in mind, these traditional garments never lost that Birnbaum spark—the result of a career born at the convergence of fashion, theater, and dance.

This first series of bridal gowns would inform the countless collections to come. In 1993, Steven teamed up with Robert Bullock to bring “Birnbaum and Bullock,” a range of impeccably crafted wedding dresses that was born out of a limited ready-to-wear market. Sixteen years later, Steven struck out on his own with his debut eponymous series, “the steven birnbaum collection;” his latest endeavor, “Steven Birnbaum Bespoke,” followed shortly after in 2015. Today, the former is ripe with classics, while the latter is couture-forward. Designed in-house at Birnbaum’s New York City atelier, “Bespoke” affords women the opportunity to work one-on-one with designer to craft a wedding dress that’s as much their vision as it is Steven’s.

In some ways, Steven’s modern-day approach to design is more about reinvigoration than newfangled synthesis: The motifs utilized in his formative years’ endeavors clearly exist in his contemporary wedding dress collections of today. The gist? All of his work has a trace. Step into a Steven Birnbaum wedding dress and you are a Broadway star (thanks to the designer’s affinity for light-as-air fabrics, you’ll float like one, too), but one that flips from the stage to an urban landscape with ease. Best of all, the designer gives his brides a trace, as well—a connection to a decisively bridal lineage that is simultaneously traditional and ever-evolving.